Have you ever thought that organic food is too expensive?
What if I told you that your child’s mood and behaviour can be improved, just by making the switch from conventionally grown food to organically grown food?
I think most families would like to improve their children’s mood and behaviour!
Organic food is better for everyone, but it is especially important for children, as their brains are still developing.
Research shows that children with ADHD have higher levels of pesticide residues in their urine, these are the chemicals that come from eating non-organic food.
If a pregnant lady eats non-organic food, the brain of her developing baby can also be affected.
There are a few reasons why non-organic food has such an impact.
One reason is that glyphosate, one of the main chemicals which is used to spray crops, actually kills bacteria. Prevailing wisdom used to be that humans aren’t bacteria, so this doesn’t matter. As we learn more about the gut microbiome, we realise that we are actually more bacteria than we are human.
Eating food with pesticides is like taking a long term, low dose antibiotic.
This kills off your good bacteria and lets the bad guys flourish. Having lowered levels of good bacteria affects our mental health and can lead to issues like anxiety and depression.
Pesticides also cause oxidative stress in our body, which slows down our body’s ability to detoxify. Oxidative stress is one of the issues which leads to behaviour problems. If our children can’t detoxify, it affects their behaviour.
Your mitochondria are the power houses of every cell in your body. Children with ADHD have mitochondria that don’t work as well. Pesticides will damage these mitochondria, so to keep them healthy, stick with organic food.
An important antioxidant in your body is glutathione. It helps you detoxify chemicals and ironically, pesticides will reduce your levels of glutathione. So not only are you taking on more chemicals that need to be detoxified, but you are also reducing your ability to get rid of these chemicals.
Inflammation in the brain is also a big factor in brain health. Anything that increases inflammation in the brain is going to make behaviour worse and pesticides will do that.
There are lots of other reasons to switch to organic food too.
Organic food tastes better! Once you start eating organic apples, you will never go back to conventional apples. The flavour just isn’t there. I still remember the first time I tried organic yoghurt about 20 years ago! It was sensational!
There are higher nutrient levels in organic food, so even though you might pay more for it, you get more nutrients for your dollar. And that means you need to get your children to eat less for them to get the same nutrient hit!
Buying organic food saves our farmers from the toxic occupational exposure they face from spraying crops. Farmers have higher levels of neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, so encouraging more farmers to grow organically will reduce the number who get these diseases. If we can see our farmer’s brains getting affected by pesticides, of course our children’s brains will be too!
The good news is that once you switch from a conventional diet to an organic diet, the pesticide residues in the urine start to decrease. It is never too late to make the change to organic food.
Pay our struggling farmers now or pay the doctor later!
